As 2011 comes to a close, many of us are making New Year’s Resolutions, from planning to eat better and exercise more to finally finishing that home improvement project. According to the advertisement pictured below, from the April 27, 1871 issue of the Holmes County Republican, even Father Time joined in this tradition of making life-changing decisions at the start of a new year by getting rid of his hour glass and investing in a watch from the Jewelry Store of A.B. Frey in Millersburg, Ohio.

Father Time is featured in this advertisement from the April 27, 1871 issue of the Holmes County Republican. His New Year Resolution must have been to find a new way to keep track of time.

The National Digital Newspaper Program is a partnership between National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress and state projects to provide enhanced access to United States newspapers published between 1836 and 1922. NEH awards support state projects to select and digitize historically significant titles that are aggregated and permanently maintained by the Library of Congress. As part of the project, the Ohio Historical Society contributed 100,000 newspaper pages to the project over a two year period ending June 2010 and will contribute an additional 100,000 pages by the end of August 2012.